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Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

nautil.us

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Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#71

Post by ZenoArrow »

ksec wrote: post #34

Recently I have been thinking about this; a lot. How do we get wiser, not smarter or cleverer much quicker then we could go with age. I dont know if we could quantitatively measure how wise you are. So it is hard to tell if a person is wise or not. And a lot of times, you dont need to read 1000s of books, have a few DR degree or thesis to be wise. It seems wise and Intellect dont necessarily have a linear relationshi…

> "One may wonder, try hard, fail hard and learn. Then you become wiser."

> "This rhymes with Zen / Buddhism"

The Zen approach to wisdom a bit different from what many think of as education, as knowing the path and walking the path are two different, almost opposite things.

For example, to know the path the answer to gaining wisdom would be close to "don't try". However, to walk the path towards wisdom you can try, and learn from that experience.

A better question might be, why do you want to be wise?

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#72

Post by ZenoArrow »

oblio wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bodies like the Euro-group, a non-official body that "although it can impose tough conditions for bailing out struggling member countries or rescuing banks, it publishes no official minutes, has no headquarters, and the people who function as its secretariat have other day jobs".

They're the finance ministers of member countries. For them to be there someone has to vote in the respective governments... Indirect democracy is still democracy. Heck, it's even the form of democracy 90% of democracies out there use.

> "Indirect democracy is still democracy"

How about an oligarchy, is that still a democracy?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#73

Post by coldtea »

oblio wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bodies like the Euro-group, a non-official body that "although it can impose tough conditions for bailing out struggling member countries or rescuing banks, it publishes no official minutes, has no headquarters, and the people who function as its secretariat have other day jobs".

They're the finance ministers of member countries. For them to be there someone has to vote in the respective governments... Indirect democracy is still democracy. Heck, it's even the form of democracy 90% of democracies out there use.

>They're the finance ministers of members country. For them to be there someone has to vote in the respective governments...

They don't keep records of what is said there, there is no official voting process, the pressures and blackmails inside the room are kept mum, and the decisions are then carried on.

This is not indirect democracy in the sense a parliament of representatives are -- this still has procedures, official records, transparency etc.

This is having your representatives participate in behind-closed-doors deals, and then present decisions taken in them as fait accompli.

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#74

Post by jondubois »

iamNumber4 wrote: post #64

Age != Wisdom. Wisdom comes from Experience and living life. If you sit on a couch all day watching t.v. your experiences do not equal someone who goes out of the house, builds things, etc... Wisdom is earned by doing, not by aging.

Doing different things in different situations. Contrasting experiences are important. In my view, you can't be wise if you haven't experienced the full spectrum of basic emotions and situations: Major failure, major success, poverty, wealth, insecurity, confidence, naivety, scepticism, laziness, ambition, pessimism, optimism, extremely bad luck, extremely good luck...

If your life experiences lean too much in one direction then you will be biased and not wise.

I think that an average person who had contrasting experiences of moderate magnitude is probably wiser than someone who mostly got an extreme set of one kind of experience.

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#75

Post by pjmorris »

KGIII wrote: post #42
ksec wrote: post #34

Recently I have been thinking about this; a lot. How do we get wiser, not smarter or cleverer much quicker then we could go with age. I dont know if we could quantitatively measure how wise you are. So it is hard to tell if a person is wise or not. And a lot of times, you dont need to read 1000s of books, have a few DR degree or thesis to be wise. It seems wise and Intellect dont necessarily have a linear relationshi…

I think intelligence is our ability to learn and knowledge is what we have already learned. I think wisdom is knowing which one of those is not applicable for a given situation. It is a combination of intuition and experience, knowing if you should learn more or if you need to apply what you have already learned. In a way, wisdom is recognizing when your knowledge is deficient. No guarantees that my assessment is cor…

""Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." - Miles Kington

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#76

Post by eximius »

This is a strange article that doesn't seem to say much of anything. It almost seems like it is just a piece written and published to make people feel better about aging. Even if the premise is true, it is incredibly insubstantial.

I, personally, would expect that wisdom does not come with age, but with experience and training in how one thinks. That doesn't come with age, it comes with time. The sooner or later you begin this training, or the harder you train, greatly effect when or if this wisdom comes. Though, in people who pursue wisdom, I doubt their pursuit decreases with age.

A final aside, the article's representation of wisdom ("When you’re old, and something goes wrong, you say, “That’s okay. There are other things that will go right.”") sounds awfully like apathy, if not careful. I believe wisdom is more than that.

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#77

Post by smrtinsert »

iamNumber4 wrote: post #64

Age != Wisdom. Wisdom comes from Experience and living life. If you sit on a couch all day watching t.v. your experiences do not equal someone who goes out of the house, builds things, etc... Wisdom is earned by doing, not by aging.

Whataboutism at its best.

Given the average person (and people are remarkably average) I would bet on an older person being wiser than a younger person.

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#78

Post by wallace_f »

wruza wrote: post #69
iamNumber4 wrote: post #64

Age != Wisdom. Wisdom comes from Experience and living life. If you sit on a couch all day watching t.v. your experiences do not equal someone who goes out of the house, builds things, etc... Wisdom is earned by doing, not by aging.

And theirs do not equal to yours. While it is generally admitted that "outside" is more experience-rich and your inequality is mathematically correct, you force the statement that interacting with "non-real" entities does not generate experience. This is not true, actually. Ask a gamer, a worker, a stripper, a mother about their experiences and they'll tell you hell of a lot you traveller never experienced or even th…

Yes, exactly. I would go further and say generalizing intelligence, even types of it like wisdom, is one of the most pervasive-yet-close-to-meaningless concepts that exists.

Maybe we say the one who went to Harvard--even assuming the rare case they got in on academic merit alone as a particularly incredible prodigy--may have fantastic mathematical ability, but not have ability or willingness to socially adapt or even contribute constructively to society (Ted Kacznyski). In other words, is there positive value in saying he was particularly intelligent rather than good at math and academic coursework, etc?

There are infinite other examples: one can be good at engineering, and bad at writing, etc.

Granted there are in fact those with more intellectual horsepower, but everyone has it in a different variety. Then their different experiences, skills and knowledge shape them as a different person.

The misleading nature of our thinking about particular ability and abstracting that into a concept of intelligence appears to also be part of human's arrogance in their egos. Hubris is something very human that we collectively get caught up in. The reality is we are all bad thinkers relative to omniscience. Arguably the greatest scientist, Newton, had plenty of crazy ideas about secret messages in the bible, and alchemy, etc., and it's not that he was stupid or illogical, it's that he had different mind that existed in a different environment, as we all do.

We also have extremely stupid ideas that people in the future will look back on in the same way, and ask themselves "why were they so smart, yet so stupid?"

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#79

Post by brookside »

I am more and more in the HN camp with those viewing the bulk of social science as...not good science.

> We have been doing a study of about 2000 people from age 21 to 100-plus. We look at their physical health, cognitive function, and psychosocial functioning. What we find is that physical health declines after middle age, which is not a surprise. Cognitive function starts to decline in older age, not a surprise. But psycho-social functioning, including wellness, quality of life, and happiness progressively improve with age. Older people handle stresses better than someone in their 20s and 30s. When you’re young and something goes wrong you might be crushed. When you’re old, and something goes wrong, you say, “That’s okay. There are other things that will go right.”

This is the unroasted scientific nut in an article written with an overwhelmingly authoritative tone. It sounds like the researchers have an online form or sent out a survey. To whom? With what specific questions? Or maybe they are asking in person and older people are more reticent to reveal to a stranger that they are lonely or unhappy. Does "We have been doing a study" mean it is still in progress, and if so, why are they reporting the results already? The answer of course is that an article like this helps justify the grant money / salaries for the UCSD Center for Healthy Aging.

> When you’re young and something goes wrong you might be crushed. When you’re old, and something goes wrong, you say, “That’s okay. There are other things that will go right.”

This bit is massive, massive blanket statement to extract from whatever survey they are conducting. Both the young and old can be equanimous.

Looking at my own grandmother's current life- almost every one of her friends is dead and she has the more limited mobility and health problems people in their 80s often have. She definitely tries to act as cheerful as possible around us, but I know she gets sad. Because having everybody who really understands you and shared common experiences with you be dead is sad. No longer being able to ride a bike or have the health to travel is sad. Its de-humanizing to think that older people somehow don't feel the emotional pain of these experiences.

Re: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age

#80

Post by TeMPOraL »

Clubber wrote: post #70
KGIII wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know enough about Brexit to form an opinion, which is good. It enables to to seriously ask this question. Have you actually considered that your opinion on Brexit could be wrong? Have you really given that any consideration? I don't have a nickel invested, so your answer doesn't matter to me. It may matter to you, however.

Agree. Unlike how most news outlets portray it, most issues have valid points on both sides. If someone doesn't understand both sides and can argue either, they don't really understand the problem. If they don't understand the problem and defer to news coverage, and are being manipulated. Based on most of the coverage of Brexit, I wouldn't have any idea what the pro-Brexit points are. I also don't have a horse in tha…

I'm not sure if I could argue the leave side fully, but here are the two points they have I believe are very much important:

- Many people do like sovereignty of their state, and fear EU is evolving towards weakening, and eventually subsuming nation states. Discussion of the merits of both the position and the fear is a complex thing that needs to go into details, and a one which media failed to do properly.

- Many people also dislike the immigration situation within the EU. Again, this is also a very complex topic.

Neither of those points, I believe, can be dismissed out of hand, which is often what happens in discussion about Brexit.

(Disclaimer: I have no direct horse in this race, but I am a citizen of the EU and kind of like it to stay, so I lean towards the stay side.)

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